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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 16, 2013
Barack Obama may be beset by Tea Party tax protests and military rapists and leaked Benghazi e-mails. But the President can rely on one thing to knock his travails out of the top spot in the news agenda -- stormchasing video from Tornado Alley. All three newscasts led with the Story of the Day: the killer twister than touched down in the small Texas town of Granbury.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 16, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
WEATHER PORN RELEGATES OBAMA’S WOES Barack Obama may be beset by Tea Party tax protests and military rapists and leaked Benghazi e-mails. But the President can rely on one thing to knock his travails out of the top spot in the news agenda -- stormchasing video from Tornado Alley. All three newscasts led with the Story of the Day: the killer twister than touched down in the small Texas town of Granbury.
The twister wiped out a subdivision that was built five years ago by Habitat for Humanity. Clearly, poor people were hardest hit by the terrifying weather. So what was Anna Werner thinking when she made this her intro? "This disaster did not discriminate. The string of tornadoes laid waste to mansions and mobile homes…" CBS' Werner and NBC's Gabe Gutierrez filed from Granbury while ABC's Steve Osunsami (look at those hailstones) and CBS' Manuel Bojorquez surveyed the damage from nearby Cleburne. Mike Seidel from NBC's cable sibling The Weather Channel also chipped in, forecasting more twisters over the weekend in a hitherto milder-than-usual sprint.
As for the President's woes, a superficial look at Andrea Mitchell's thumbsucker on NBC makes his plight look just terrible. Mitchell suggested parallels with Watergate and Iran-contra and impeachment and the Iraq War. Now listen to what Mitchell lists as Obama's actual transgressions: he is a mere observer of his administration's problems; and he is stylistically too unhurriedly calm about them.
So…
Concerning Benghazi, there were hints on Wednesday that ABC's Jonathan Karl was a touch hyper-defensive about the accuracy of his Exclusive on Friday in which he publicized the content of inter-agency talking-point e-mails. Major Garrett, CBS' man at the White House hinted at the time that Karl's reporting was not substantiated; now Garrett flatly declares that the two Republican talking points about the talking points were incorrect.
Concerning the IRS scandal, ABC's Karl reported that President Obama is so angry that he said to be privately joking about "going Bulworth," a reference to Warren Beatty's political movie satire. How does Karl substantiate that reporting? By airing a clip from Bulworth, that's how.
CBS' Nancy Cordes tried to follow-up on the IRS scandal but was frustrated by the report of the Inspector General of the Treasury Department. The report failed to find out whose idea it was to create the criteria for Tea Party applicants for tax-exempt status to be subjected to extra scrutiny.
Concerning the rape epidemic at the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin made a head count when the President hauled the entire Pentagon brass -- uniformed and civilian -- into a meeting at the White House for a dressing down for its failure to crack down on sexual violence in the ranks. Martin found one woman present.
NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd summed up the President's response to what he called bubbling controversies: clean-up the IRS; defend Attorney General Eric Holder; change the debate over Benghazi; condemn military sexual assaults -- and refuse to dignify questions about Richard Nixon with a response.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS Last week, NBC's Richard Engel came up empty when he tested a urine sample after a suspicious attack by government forces in Syria but found no evidence of chemical warfare. Now the BBC's Ian Pannell has been given video of another suspicious attack from a helicopter on the village of Saraqeb. ABC, which has a newsgathering partnership with BBC, aired Pannell's report. Pannell had no urine to test along with video of the death throes of Mariam Khatib, a mother of eight.
Charlie d'Agata of CBS is embedded with GIs training Afghan soldiers in Mansurabad, an arid village in Kandahar Province. The GIs cannot believe it when they have not even succeeded in teaching them that landmine detectors need batteries to work.
Somehow hackers used a Missouri telephone number to run a scam to sell $519K worth of calls in Somalia, Azerbaijan, and Guinea. I watched Linzie Janis' explanation of how this was done on ABC three times and I still do not understand.
Vengeance against the United States for killing Moslems in Iraq and Afghanistan was the motive for the Boston Marathon pressure cooker bombs. That was the conclusion that reporters on all three newscasts made after police leaked evidence: John Miller on CBS, Pete Williams on NBC, Brian Ross on ABC. Investigators say they found the scrawled message inside the boat in the Watertown driveway where suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding after being wounded in the firefight that killed his brother. ABC's Ross said that Tsarnaev's handwritten anti-American curses discredit the arguments made in the Free Jahar YouTube channel on his behalf. Ross calls the video channel "bizarre."
Last week I resorted to IMDb to find an explanation why ABC's Linsey Davis was assigned to offer free publicity to the movie documentary Venus and Serena (the co-director turned out to be an alumna of Good Morning America). Now, ABC's Alex Perez has been assigned to give free publicity to the documentary Sole Survivor. Despite resorting to IMDb once again I am at a loss to know why the movie's content is newsworthy.
Almost as thrilling as the Weather Porn in the Story of the Day, is video of cars crashing over and over again. Such crash-dummy footage is routinely supplied by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. NBC took the bait again: this time John Yang, last year Tom Costello, in December and in August.
All three newscasts closed with a sports story. CBS opted for celebrity as David Beckham decided he would bend it no more (Mark Phillips' haircut highlights package was so loaded with sports clips that, presumably, it did not have the rights clearances to be posted online). ABC ran out Steve Osunsami for a second time in one newscast for an America Strong profile of Charlotte Brown, the blind teenage Texan pole vaulter. NBC chose girls' high school track-&-field too and Ron Mott's package was my favorite: runners Jordan Dickerson and Robin Jeter.
The twister wiped out a subdivision that was built five years ago by Habitat for Humanity. Clearly, poor people were hardest hit by the terrifying weather. So what was Anna Werner thinking when she made this her intro? "This disaster did not discriminate. The string of tornadoes laid waste to mansions and mobile homes…" CBS' Werner and NBC's Gabe Gutierrez filed from Granbury while ABC's Steve Osunsami (look at those hailstones) and CBS' Manuel Bojorquez surveyed the damage from nearby Cleburne. Mike Seidel from NBC's cable sibling The Weather Channel also chipped in, forecasting more twisters over the weekend in a hitherto milder-than-usual sprint.
As for the President's woes, a superficial look at Andrea Mitchell's thumbsucker on NBC makes his plight look just terrible. Mitchell suggested parallels with Watergate and Iran-contra and impeachment and the Iraq War. Now listen to what Mitchell lists as Obama's actual transgressions: he is a mere observer of his administration's problems; and he is stylistically too unhurriedly calm about them.
So…
Concerning Benghazi, there were hints on Wednesday that ABC's Jonathan Karl was a touch hyper-defensive about the accuracy of his Exclusive on Friday in which he publicized the content of inter-agency talking-point e-mails. Major Garrett, CBS' man at the White House hinted at the time that Karl's reporting was not substantiated; now Garrett flatly declares that the two Republican talking points about the talking points were incorrect.
Concerning the IRS scandal, ABC's Karl reported that President Obama is so angry that he said to be privately joking about "going Bulworth," a reference to Warren Beatty's political movie satire. How does Karl substantiate that reporting? By airing a clip from Bulworth, that's how.
CBS' Nancy Cordes tried to follow-up on the IRS scandal but was frustrated by the report of the Inspector General of the Treasury Department. The report failed to find out whose idea it was to create the criteria for Tea Party applicants for tax-exempt status to be subjected to extra scrutiny.
Concerning the rape epidemic at the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin made a head count when the President hauled the entire Pentagon brass -- uniformed and civilian -- into a meeting at the White House for a dressing down for its failure to crack down on sexual violence in the ranks. Martin found one woman present.
NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd summed up the President's response to what he called bubbling controversies: clean-up the IRS; defend Attorney General Eric Holder; change the debate over Benghazi; condemn military sexual assaults -- and refuse to dignify questions about Richard Nixon with a response.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS Last week, NBC's Richard Engel came up empty when he tested a urine sample after a suspicious attack by government forces in Syria but found no evidence of chemical warfare. Now the BBC's Ian Pannell has been given video of another suspicious attack from a helicopter on the village of Saraqeb. ABC, which has a newsgathering partnership with BBC, aired Pannell's report. Pannell had no urine to test along with video of the death throes of Mariam Khatib, a mother of eight.
Charlie d'Agata of CBS is embedded with GIs training Afghan soldiers in Mansurabad, an arid village in Kandahar Province. The GIs cannot believe it when they have not even succeeded in teaching them that landmine detectors need batteries to work.
Somehow hackers used a Missouri telephone number to run a scam to sell $519K worth of calls in Somalia, Azerbaijan, and Guinea. I watched Linzie Janis' explanation of how this was done on ABC three times and I still do not understand.
Vengeance against the United States for killing Moslems in Iraq and Afghanistan was the motive for the Boston Marathon pressure cooker bombs. That was the conclusion that reporters on all three newscasts made after police leaked evidence: John Miller on CBS, Pete Williams on NBC, Brian Ross on ABC. Investigators say they found the scrawled message inside the boat in the Watertown driveway where suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding after being wounded in the firefight that killed his brother. ABC's Ross said that Tsarnaev's handwritten anti-American curses discredit the arguments made in the Free Jahar YouTube channel on his behalf. Ross calls the video channel "bizarre."
Last week I resorted to IMDb to find an explanation why ABC's Linsey Davis was assigned to offer free publicity to the movie documentary Venus and Serena (the co-director turned out to be an alumna of Good Morning America). Now, ABC's Alex Perez has been assigned to give free publicity to the documentary Sole Survivor. Despite resorting to IMDb once again I am at a loss to know why the movie's content is newsworthy.
Almost as thrilling as the Weather Porn in the Story of the Day, is video of cars crashing over and over again. Such crash-dummy footage is routinely supplied by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. NBC took the bait again: this time John Yang, last year Tom Costello, in December and in August.
All three newscasts closed with a sports story. CBS opted for celebrity as David Beckham decided he would bend it no more (Mark Phillips' haircut highlights package was so loaded with sports clips that, presumably, it did not have the rights clearances to be posted online). ABC ran out Steve Osunsami for a second time in one newscast for an America Strong profile of Charlotte Brown, the blind teenage Texan pole vaulter. NBC chose girls' high school track-&-field too and Ron Mott's package was my favorite: runners Jordan Dickerson and Robin Jeter.
